Amazon won't sell you a Chromecast, but they will sell a counterfeit - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/Display-Wishpower-Receiver-Miracast-AirMirror/dp/B077978NRN/ <comment><USER2> Amazon has a major issue with screening against knockoffs and counterfeits, and the severity of the issues surrounding this grows every day. For instance, my friend bought a camera that looked similar to the Arlo, but it contained a telnet backdoor. Another would ping a strange AliCloud VPS over UDP that appeared to contain data related to network configuration without any explanation or ability to be disabled, short of router firewall rules. As knockoff vendors get more clever at disguising their devices as the one's they're trying to copy, an increasing amount of less-technical users become ever-more at risk regarding their security and privacy.

<comment><USER3> >Amazon has a major issue with screening against knockoffs and counterfeits

Does it ever! I refuse to buy expensive electronics or equipment on Amazon after getting burned with a knockoff Bose headphones and SWISSGEAR luggage. You don't even get the benefit of cheap prices as those things were within reasonable range of their typical retail price (and with luggage the price fluctuation is always high). It's insane.

<comment><USER4> Don't buy name brands from 3rd party sellers on Amazon. Pretty simple. Purchasing on amazon isn't about getting a "deal", it's about getting something at or around retail price without having to go to the store. If you are looking for cheap name brand items, go to TJMax or something.

<comment><USER5> > Don't buy name brands from 3rd party sellers on Amazon

No, don't buy name brands from Fulfilled by Amazon sellers (including Amazon itself) on Amazon, only from known-good third-party non-FBA sellers (exception, Amazon is okay if there are no FBA sellers for a product), since Amazon commingles inventory from FBA sellers (including themselves), so you never know which seller actually sourced a good purchased from an FBA seller.

<comment><USER6> There's something seriously wrong if this is the advice being doled out. It's as if we're ok with the haphazard shopping experience and there's a set of guidelines on avoiding being scammed. It's the kind of thing I never have to worry about with so many other retailers but we all stick with Amazon because Prime perks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The elephant in the room is rather "why does Amazon not sell Chromecasts?" \- The answer is rather obvious but it's an illegitimate business practice when you are in the business of selling pretty much everything else. The Amazon line of products should sell based on their merits only, not because its competitors' are not available.

<comment><USER8> > The elephant in the room is rather "why does Amazon not sell Chromecasts?"

> it's an illegitimate business practice when you are in the business of > selling pretty much everything else.

Google is a predatory monopoly that is leveraging their existing power in search to move directly into consumer goods.

Amazon is also a predatory monopoly that is leveraging their existing power in shopping logistics to move directly into consumer goods.

This is tit for tat.

[https://www.recode.net/2017/10/12/16464132/google-target- ret...](https://www.recode.net/2017/10/12/16464132/google-target-retailers- amazon-walmart-assistant-alexa-home-echo-augmented-reality)

[https://www.pcworld.com/article/2975731/software- games/youtu...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2975731/software- games/youtube-gaming-launches-today-to-challenge-twitchs-livestreaming- dominance.html)

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16371292/google- youtube-a...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16371292/google-youtube- amazon-echo-show)

These companies are moving into the same market, and if they don't fight as hard as possible, they're letting their shareholders down.

I don't know if it's illegal and the DOJ is asleep at the wheel, but Google isn't going to stop: They're not content with selling people's personal data and even that they're losing to ad blockers. They're getting desperate.

Amazon isn't going to stop either, fuelling consumerism is their bread and butter, so they need to be in the middle of every shopping transaction. No market is out of bounds, but they're really struggling with media and product. These were big investments and Amazon is simply not very good at either, so they too are desperate.

We consumers are surely the collateral damage in the meantime, but besides "voting with our wallet", what else could we do? Regulation would be likely required to even allow Google and Amazon to cooperate without violating their obligations their shareholders, but what shape would that take?

<comment><USER9> Then how come they sell pixel phones?

Edit: I did some googling and it appears that amazon pulled both Apple TV and Chromecast because they didn't offer Amazon Prime. Which is clearly abuse of their position in the market to me but I'm just a layperson.

Then int 2017 they were slated to come back but now in 2018 I can't find chromecasts anymore. Only peripherals for it and clones.

Edit: Lol I just noticed they're selling the "fire tv stick" instead. What a stupid name.

<comment><USER10> > it appears that amazon pulled both Apple TV and Chromecast because they > didn't offer Amazon Prime.

Amazon pulled Prime Video off of Chromecast themselves to sell the Fire TV (stick). Google did _not_ remove Amazon's apps.

<comment><USER11> Google first changed the Chromecast protocol a few times to prevent Amazon from using it.

There's a lot of fuckery there, and those of us that tried to build open source chromecast clones got fucked by Google as well.

If you wish to argue against this, please offer me a way to implement the Chromecast protocol on a raspberry pi, reliably, without it constantly being broken by Google's updates.

<comment><USER12> I'd be interested to see a citation for your claim that Google intentionally changed the Cast protocol to prevent Amazon from using it.

Your argument that Cast is hard on unsupported platforms is irrelevant. They are, by definition, unsupported, and Google is under no obligation to support them.

Google provides an SDK that people are free to use on the platforms Google chooses to support.

[https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/developers](https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/developers)

<comment><USER11> How do I receive a chromecast with that SDK, please?

The point is not about sending, but about receiving, as was possible with miracast, and which would have made the fire stick a killer product (by having immediate compatibility with all Google apps' casting feature)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I though there are strict laws against counterfeiting? It isn't even slightly different, it has the chrome logo on it!

With all the mishaps lately like sending out stones and bricks [1] instead of cameras I am worried this will carry over into other Amazon owned companies like Whole Foods.

[1] [https://fstoppers.com/gear/buyer-orders-6000-camera- amazon-s...](https://fstoppers.com/gear/buyer-orders-6000-camera-amazon-sends- box-rocks-instead-225267)

<comment><USER14> It's not straight-up counterfeiting, since they own up to not being Chromecast, but it may not survive legal action. It's a weak defense. Google may have already started legal action. The trademark infringement is certainly there.

A lot depends on where it's made. Does Google have patents on the form factor in that country, either by treaties or by actually registering in the country? It can shut down the reselling by American companies at least.

As for food, counterfeits are unnecessary. There are already store brands which offer mostly or entirely the same food stuffs but with a derivative name (like Miracast vs. Chromecast, or Crunchy Nuts vs. Grape Nuts) and knock-off packaging.

There's also the bit where 3rd-party sellers don't exist in grocery stores.

<comment><USER15> >"It's not straight-up counterfeiting, since they own up to not being Chromecast, [...]"

I'm certain it doesn't work that way in the UK.

Small suppliers get _all_ their product confiscated in raids by Trading Standards when they sell knock-off Nike, or whatever.

Everyone knows it's knock-off (counterfeit, branded sports wear, like trainers and tracksuits). The sellers don't get let off for admitting it's fake; sometimes they go to prison, always they have goods confiscated.

[http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8034060.Counterfe...](http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8034060.Counterfeit_crackdown_seizes___30_000_of_goods/)

This seems analogous to the Amazon situation.

By rule of law Amazon warehouses should be shut by the police until all inventory that's counterfeit can be removed by Trading Standards. Presumably they lack resources to effectively police traders larger than market stalls.

<comment><USER16> >By rule of law Amazon warehouses should be shut by the police until all inventory that's counterfeit can be removed by Trading Standards.

And harm the economy? Fat chance. Perhaps their size isn't as massive there, but in the US Amazon is certainly "too big to fail" at this point.

<comment><USER15> That of course is short-termism: the economy (sic) is harmed more by fake good of low quality. The problem is enough corporate financial profit benefits from it.

I think if it were up to me I'd issue an ultimatum. Remove all counterfeit goods from your marketplace/supply chain or your warehouse in South Yorkshire is shutdown until the 3 people working in the local Trading Standards office can process the full inventory and confiscate counterfeit goods; that would include all goods in transit, eg by post, with an Amazon label or biking performed through Amazon. That would be lenient compared to how small "businesses" are treated.

Then choose one warehouse to assess, do a raid, check compliance and act appropriately. Note, advertisement of counterfeits is non-compliance.

That will definitely never happen this side of the greens getting in to power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looking at the first page of search results for "Chromecast" on Amazon:

Top result is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.

Second result is Amazon's Fire TV stick.

Third result is Roku Express.

4-7 are counterfeits with logos on them that don't precisely match the Chrome logo, but are clearly designed to falsely evoke Google's brand.

8 is a generic with no Google-related logo on it.

9-11 are counterfeits with almost-but-not-quite Google logos on them. 12 is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.

13-14 are accessories "for Chromecast.

15 is a counterfeit with the Chrome logo on it.

Amazon correctly identifies which product category Chromecast is, and puts an add for Fire TV above the search results, indicating that they exercised some amount of direct (non-algorithmic) control over that page. I'd say Google has a pretty open-and-shut case for trademark infringement here.

</comment><comment><USER18> To be fair, a Miracast device is not a Chromecast counterfeit. Miracast is older than Chromecast, and while Google's Android phones dropped Miracast support around the time Chromecast came out, Chromecast is not compatible with Miracast.

In the larger picture, this whole affair is nasty and wouldn't have to have happened if everyone supported the standard: Miracast.

<comment><USER19> Miracast is a standard, not a product. There is nothing wrong with selling a Miracast device, however this particular device is blatant Chromecast rip-off, designwise.

<comment><USER18> Ah, I hadn't seen the visual of the product (Amazon requires JavaScript to load product images).

<comment><USER20> The product quite literally has the chrome logo slapped on the it.

<comment><USER21> It's close. The slants in the circle swirl thing point the opposite direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Elevation Labs wrote a post about this a couple days ago: [https://www.elevationlab.com/blogs/news/amazon-is- complicit-...](https://www.elevationlab.com/blogs/news/amazon-is-complicit- with-counterfeit-sellers)

</comment><comment><USER23> A megastore that doesnt allow a popular product in their store.

That's a weird business model

<comment> semi-extrinsic Amazon is super weird if you don't live in a country where they have an official site. Half to two-thirds of the products can't be shipped to where I live, for Reasons, but I can't filter out those unshippable items. It's to the point where I have given up using it for anything but books.

<comment><USER24> In (at least) European Amazons, you can avoid looking at unshippable products by:

\- searching for something

\- selecting the most applicable category on the left, next to the results

\- selecting Amazon.(de|fr|it|es|co.uk) on the bottom left (under Seller)

What is sold by Amazon generally gets shipped anywhere (within Europe?).

As a company, before Amazon Business, this also made sure you'd be able to shop without VAT.

<comment><USER25> A lot of the products from German Amazon cannot be shipped to Switzerland. Not sure why.

<comment><USER26> Because it is not in EU.

<comment><USER27> It's not that hard to ship a parcel across a border. Maybe having to pay tariffs would destroy the "Amazon experience" or something?

<comment><USER28> Apparently it isn't worth the effort.

Could be that Swiss customs takes ages to clear parcels. Could be that tax or import duties are complicated or simply just so high that it's not worth it. I knew a lot of people in Switzerland near the German border used to go shopping in Germany because was significantly cheaper, probably still the case today.

<comment><USER29> Not so much the case today that it is significantly cheaper because the Swiss Franc weak-end 7-8% in the last year to the Euro. Also, the German food is not comparable to Swiss food in quality. Example: Swiss meat is more expensive but then again it is from Switzerland and not form Poland (which can happen in Germany but not in Switzerland because of the tariffs on foreign meat).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Google has a website full of garbage, knockoffs, fraud and spam too, that they make ludicrous amounts of money advertising and shield with fake customer support and email loops. It's an anomaly that these companies are allowed to keep the profit without tax or liability.

<comment><USER31> Google makes a lot of money from its keyword protection racket.

Many users will type, for example, "facebook" into their address bar. The browser searches Google, and whoever bought the ads will be on top.

Facebook can't allow any other company to come up first, and so they pay.

Many, many ad clicks work this way, and I consider it to be a dark pattern at best, but similar to fraud at worst.

<comment><USER32> Would you ban all ads related to brand names?

I think facebook feeling the "need" to buy those ad slots is their own problem.

<comment><USER31> OK, try a company other than Facebook. What about a company with many competitors buying ads against their name? Or a small company fighting ads from counterfeiters?

I'm not suggesting a solution to this. The core issue is that most ads are bad for users, and an ad business can never be truly harmless to its "product" \-- the users.

<comment><USER32> > OK, try a company other than Facebook.

Not much difference in my mind.

> The core issue is that most ads are bad for users

That's true even if the ad is for "potato", though.

I'm not ready to call the very concept of ads a racket, even if it's generally negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> On top of that the legitimacy of some good reviews is very suspicious

But yeah I can't believe how much of a crapshow buying this kind of equipment is on Amazon

Try to buy a Firestick if you're not on their "approved country" list and you can't

Now this, I hope Amzn enjoys all the returns and bad publicity

<comment><USER34> Amazon reviews are so easy to cheat, it's not even funny. eBay's system is still better, and they actually do more about "fake" accounts and/with counterfeit goods.

<comment><USER35> Pasting the link into [https://www.fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com) has become standard practice for me before buying anything off Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Check out the box it comes in. It's hilariously knocked-off. [https://i.imgur.com/YQRFwdf.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/YQRFwdf.jpg)

<comment><USER37> That is hilarious. It is somewhat strange the have the correct order of colours for the logo, but have used the google font from around 4 years ago.

That, and the rest of the fonts are not the typical Chinese Times Roman(tm)

The bit that caught my eye was the Just Dance channel (I assume its a twitch stream)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Having read a good number of (at this point) 150+ comnents this gist so far seems ro be:

\- Lots of assorted complaints about Amazon

\- Very few "I'll never shop there again..."

Seems to me that even when Amazon is wrong things still work out for them. Why should they change?

<comment><USER39> I still shop there, I just wouldn't consider buying food, electronics, toys, medical or cosmetic supplies, etc. from them at this point.

Perhaps it's still a net positive for them, especially if most customers are oblivious to their counterfeiting problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Amazon is going to stop selling nest products. [http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-wont-sell-nest- product...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-wont-sell-nest-products- from-google-2018-3)

</comment><comment><USER41> Back when I worked at LimeWire, Google refused to sell us search ads, presumably on the grounds of "promoting IP infringement". But plenty of people had taken our open source codebase, added malware, and had no problem running Google ads as "LimeWire". So when users searched for "LimeWire" the first thing they were presented with was counterfeit ad search results for malware and there was nothing we could do about it.

</comment><comment><USER42> You gotta love the "Special Note" saying "This is not a Chromecast".

<comment><USER43> Yep, and the comments are hilarious - worth a look just for the comedy value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Fakespot is so important if you continue to use the Amazon. If you're not buying name brand, you are likely buying a crappy product with gamed reviews. It is a nightmare on Amazon now and it pisses me off at Amazon refuses to address it.

</comment><comment><USER45> In Amazon India, sellers are ripped through FBA and Amazon policies:

1\. When abusive buyers damage and return product, Amazon releases refund. We had one instance where one buyer was buying and returning same product for 3 times (2 times received in "customer damaged" condition) and irrespective of us escalating the issue, Amazon kept issuing refund. Also, it didn't reimburse for "customer damaged" as product was not under reimbursement category.

2\. We have a strong feeling that few abusive buyers use FBA to create counterfeit absolutely free of cost.

3\. Another nightmare is with Amazon seller support. Seems they are allocating good people for buyers, but seems to keep completely juniors who don't have any idea about seller concerns.

4\. Their system is full of bugs. For instance, system will charge wrong fee and getting reimbursement is a tedious process. They will ask for certain details that we can't pull from seller central.

5\. Even hiring dedicated account management from Amazon wouldn't help as they will only pitch and nag for ads

</comment><comment> amiga-workbench No wonder Google keeps yanking access to their services.

<comment><USER46> I see what appear to be fewer AWS examples using Angular, not sure if due to the ongoing YouTube-FireTV "feud". For example the latest AWS Amplify and AppSync JS libraries have proper support for React since day one, but Angular is in future plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Seems to be a solid product, according to the reviews:

> So when i first received this product i thought it would be just another > dongle like chrome cast. But oh boy was i wrong!!! This is such an amazing > product and the video quality is extremely clear and work all around my > house.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anybody know whether that device is compatible with the Chromecast app?

I purchased a similar (but cheaper) knockoff from China for the simple purpose of watching videos on an older TV:

[https://www.banggood.com/AnyCast-M3-Plus-2_4G-Miracast- DLNA-...](https://www.banggood.com/AnyCast-M3-Plus-2_4G-Miracast-DLNA-Airplay- Display-Dongle-TV-Stick-p-1187368.html)

On a side note, I'm still unsure about how well Micracast is supported in Linux - seems a lot of projects start and end up dying:

[https://askubuntu.com/questions/318298/ubuntu-as-miracast- se...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/318298/ubuntu-as-miracast-sender- receiver)

</comment><comment><USER49> I would argue that retail world has counterfeits in similar fashion as online. Also if not amazon, you will find as many other big name sites and stand alone sites selling these fake things. It's an existential problem of selling goods that no one has much solutions yet. People think it's easy to fix, but these guys will find cracks and th solution usually has side effects and other unintended side effects that these big retailers are not willing to take. I'm sure they have something in development but they are testing the heck out of it, which I think would involve AI. Just give it sometime

</comment><comment><USER50> Amazon is doing these two competing things right now:

\- opening up 3rd party marketplace to dodgy sellers from Asia shipping stuff to US (likely to counter Alibaba)

\- increasing false positives rate in counterfeit detection beyond reasonable levels, kicking out legitimate sellers upon mere unfounded suspicion (e.g. you just list an item, you immediately get banned without any sale and they don't easily accept a certificate proving you could sell it)

So in order to counter the threat from Alibaba, they are making even the life of good but small-medium sellers a hell in sense of "guilty by default".

</comment><comment><USER51> As much as Walmart and Jet.com have still a lot of work in front of them to make their e-commerce experience better, those two companies have a pretty involved process of approval for new (US only) sellers.

This approval process slows down Jet and Walmart in terms of growing their sellers' base, but it actually may be their strongest point in the war with Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER52> This Amazon Google trade war is the best example of why Amazon will not be immune to monopoly talks in the near future.

I'm disappointed in them for choosing to not sell their competitors, it prevents me from wanting to use their services.

</comment><comment><USER53> Its not labeled as a Chromecast, so as a consumer I wouldn't mistake it for one. Seems fair enough, not exactly counterfeiting.

<comment><USER54> It uses the Chromecast logo and design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm glad that I have not come across this problem on the European Amazon stores.

</comment><comment><USER56> Google needs to fight back against Amazon. The only way to stop a bully s bully them. Google has all the cards.

It is fine if Amazon does not want to sell but banning everyone else on their market place is anti competitive.

<comment><USER57> Google prevents Amazon from implementing Chromecast. That is why they pulled Chromecast devices in the first place isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> calling all google lawyercats

</comment><comment><USER59> Apple's latest Magic Keyboard is an atrocious piece of garbage whose keys are so sensitive that they trigger when you breathe on them. Apparently Tim Cook thought it would be a good idea to make this the only keyboard you can buy from Apple and cancel the old model that humans could actually use. I bought one of the older ones from Amazon and now I get to worry that it's going to be a counterfeit that phones all my keystrokes home to China. Nice world we're building here.

</comment><comment><USER60> If design counterfeit is the only complaint you have, every major android maker launched a iPhone X design knockoff at MWC Barcelona

</comment><comment><USER61> How is it counterfeit? It's Miracast, not Chromecast. Using your logic, Chevy's are counterfeit Fords.

<comment><USER62> But Chevy don't put a Ford logo on front of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Amazon been in HN recently and I follow many links, learnt alot of interesting things about Mr.Bezos.

To be honest, his picture now comes more like a 21st century version of Don Corleone. Sure Bezoz didnt kill anyone but I bet Don would love to know the key to his success which in case of Amazon seems to be very simple recipie:

\- setup website making sure everything goes legal. \- grow big and fast. Hire enough people to cover 80% of your HQ town's business district \- because now you hire 40,000 people in one city, those people have voting power. Congratulation! You become too big to jail \- at this stage, fuck legality. Allow counterfits in an open unmonitored market. \- wait for lawsuit that will come. Those Chineese knockoffs of corridor night-lights? Yeah they dont have any certification and thats why your house burned down when you were vacationing with family. \- sue Bezos but make sure you know the law, at least in Seattle (40,000 workers) where judges seems to agree that he only provides platform to sell and is not responsible for content. Know that many people are rotting in jail for similar behavior, including Sill Road website owner who never dealt drugs on his own but just provide platform to do so (although arguebly he was behaving much darker than that) to any torrent or music website ever existed and died on internet. \- basically at this point with such huge workforce in Seattle and owning a mouth piece to say anything he wants via Washington post, this guy is a hard core mobster, breaking rules he knows he can break and wreacking billions in process. Please - until you hire few thausands in your city, do not attempt to try what he does - you will spent lifetime in jail for counterfitting.

</comment><comment><USER64> On one hand, anyone can obviously see that this is clearly ripping off the Chromecast's looks (and trademarked logo). But on the other hand, anyone who buys this thinking they are getting a Chromecast obviously didn't read the description. The first line is "special note: this isn't a Chromecast." One of the product pictures clearly shows that it can do several things but not Amazon Video or Netflix. I'm not sure I feel sorry for people that buy this. Didn't you learn that MegaBlox weren't as good as Legos when you were a kid?

Also, I don't know if the description has changed in the last couple months, but the top review (2 out of 5 stars) focuses on the fact that it's not 5GHz capable, but it never claims that it can. Again, it's possible that they changed the description since the review was posted, but I can't see anything on this product that is an outright lie. This company is staying on the right side of shady behavior and not straying into criminal territory.

Crappy product? Probably. Trademark infringement? Almost definitely. Counterfeit? Not quite. It's just MegaBlocks vs. Legos.

<comment><USER65> You're blaming the victim. This is a rip off, which clearly reminds of the original, and probably 80% of buyers are searching for the real deal and my end up buying this shit.

<comment><USER64> I'm not blaming the victim, most* of the purchasers are in on the scam- they think they can "stick it to big Google" and buy a product that they know isn't a real Chromecast and save $10 over the price of a real Chromecast. As Dave Chappelle said, "You were in on the heist, you just didn't like your cut." They thought they could get a product without paying for the R&D effort goes into making a good product.

If you pay less money you can't expect to get the same thing. Situations where you get a better product for less money are pretty rare when the product is sold in large quantities- manufacturers won't give up free profit margin. If someone knowingly buys an inferior product, they don't get to complain when it isn't as good as the original. "Oh, man my $50k Hyundai Equus isn't as nice as a $70k Mercedes, I thought they'd be exactly the same."

*I'll accept that a few old grandmas bought these thinking they were the real deal, but most people knew they weren't getting real Chromecasts in the first place.

<comment><USER66> I could not tell you how much a Chromecast costs. Or even a FireTV for that matter. And I shouldn't have to know the MSRP to know if I am getting scammed.

And once Amazon replaces the "buy now with one click" button with "please read every word on this page before purchasing" button we can talk. Amazon wants fast and brainless purchasing.

<comment><USER67> I get where you're coming from about how much due diligence is reasonably required of a customer, but at the same time, ignorance of the product you're buying is not a very good defense.

<comment><USER28> There's ignorance, and then there's getting misled. Amazon's search is essentially saying this = Chromecast. You type in Chromecast, top hit is something that looks like a Chromecast, clearly engineered to mislead, right down to the logo.

Yes, technically it doesn't say it's a Chromecast, and most of the 5 star reviews are barely coherent or obviously shills, so it doesn't take a genius. But still it's a shitty experience, especially if you aren't a technical person. Even as a technical person, it's a shitty experience, you can't get what you wanted, and might spend 10 minutes looking, sifting through shite knockoffs, wondering why there aren't any real Chromecasts (like I did).

This is how you ruin the reputation of your business very, very quickly.

<comment><USER32> > Amazon's search is essentially saying this = Chromecast.

Are you familiar with Amazon's search? Most searches have items in the completely wrong category on the first page. It being wrong is _expected_ , not evidence of fakery.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"This bash script contains hidden JavaScript to improve in-browser readability" - <AUTHOR> https://firebase.tools/ <comment><USER2> Neat.</comment>


Feedback requested on an idea to simplify entering locations on GPS devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2006/07/simple-code-for-entering-latitude-and.html

<comment><USER2> I have four suggestions for improvements:

1\. Remove L from your alphabet. As long as people use upper-case letters, it's fine; but someone is going to use lower-case letters and get confused between "l" and "1".

2\. Remove T from your alphabet. With poor handwriting, "T" and "7" can be confused.

3\. Remove U from your alphabet. It's easy to confuse "U" and "V".

(Note that 29^9 > 6.48 x 10^12, so the above changes don't affect the ability to pack the value into 9 symbols.)

4\. Use a better checksum. Maybe there's some deep logic which I'm missing, but I can't see any way to prove that your checksum will detect all single- symbol errors or all two-symbol swaps (these are by far the two most common data-entry errors). I suggest using C = 1 x p_1 + 2 x p_2 + ... + 9 x p_9 mod 29, which will always detect both of these errors.

\-- the other local Comlab DPhil.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I'll look into implementing those changes. I'm not sure why I chose that particular checksum... it's been a while since I wrote this.

John.</comment></comment>


Outdoor Preschools - <AUTHOR> https://www.rei.com/blog/news/outdoor-preschool-trends <comment><USER2> It'd be interesting to see if children raised with outdoor preschools had better eyesight. There's a strong correlation between time spend indoors during childhood and nearsightedness. [1]

[1] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/scin.559183...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/scin.5591830323)

<comment><USER3> I haven't looked into it enough to know how "out there" this idea is, but I think I've read that there seems to be a correlation between lack of UV exposure and myopia.

Glass blocks UV. Which means people are getting next to zero UV exposure indoors, even if the room is brightly lit.

The past few years, we've been keeping out windows open basically from the time it's warm enough in the spring to when it starts getting too cold in the fall. We ran our AC for maybe a week total this summer.

Anyway, where I'm getting at with this is since our windows are open, we should be getting significantly more UV exposure, even when indoors. I wonder if the rise of air conditioning did a double hit to people's eyesight by both 1. Keeping them inside more often and 2. Leading to people closing their windows, which blocks UV exposure.

Anyway, a though I had the other day.

<comment><USER4> Most windows don't let in much more UV when open. Maybe if you have big sliding doors or similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi everyone.

This is a very concise (11:32) video that goes over some of the culture and thinking around outdoor kindergartens.

I believe that it is quite informative:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw&feature=youtu.be)

I believe that the best part about these schools is that early on they explicitly teach teamwork and understanding limits. It's quite shocking culturally seeing kids whittling with sharp knives and climbing rather precarious trees but it seems to work well.

</comment><comment><USER6> My son goes to one of these. We moved him out of another (indoor) preschool. He loves it - the kids seem to get along better, he's been more well behaved, and it seems to foster his creativity. That said, he's also older now! But we've had a great experience.

<comment><USER7> Your experiment has #samples = 1 and no external variables control, yet I absolutely believe the reported outcome.

<comment><USER8> You're forgetting about all the other kids in the outdoor kindergarten systems around the world. I'm sure he enrolled his son into it after learning about their success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We have outdoor preschools in Seattle, but because of how licensing works, my family can't use them. Outdoor preschools can only run for 4 hours usually 9:30-1:30, instead of full day, which is really what you need if you have two working parents.

<comment><USER10> Do you happen to know what the licensing problems are? My family is in exactly the same boat; I'd love to be able to complain constructively to DYCF about which of their rules is responsible for preventing us from using a program like Fiddleheads.

<comment><USER9> I think it's this:

[https://app.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=110-300&full=tr...](https://app.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=110-300&full=true#110-300-0145)

>(6) Licensed outdoor play areas must be enclosed with a fence or barrier that is intended to prevent children from exiting and discourages climbing. If the outdoor play area is enclosed by a barrier that is not a fence, the barrier may be a wall constructed with brick, stone, or a similar material.

For some background a co-worker's wife works at one of the outdoor preschools and said that in order to be full time you have to have a fence in play space next to the indoor school.

<comment><USER6> There is actually a pilot program to allow full day preschools in WA. Our son goes to one of them, their class travels to parks outside of the school. More info here: [https://www.dcyf.wa.gov/about/government- community/advisory/...](https://www.dcyf.wa.gov/about/government- community/advisory/opp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Beyond preschool, learn about Sudbury Valley School and other self-directed learning.

I find it mind-blowing how much more we learn when outside mainstream education, which constrains us.

I've compiled many videos and links on it, as well as some of my thoughts, in this blog entry: [http://joshuaspodek.com/mind-blowing-educational- practices](http://joshuaspodek.com/mind-blowing-educational-practices).

Peter Gray's book _Free to Learn_ is the most comprehensive resource [http://www.freetolearnbook.com](http://www.freetolearnbook.com).

</comment><comment><USER12> If you're interested, it's also worth looking at Erin Kenny's book "Forest Kindergardens: The Cedarsong Way." She founded the first one in the Seattle area out on Vashon Island and has been the model for the others that have sprung up since then.

My wife couldn't find one on Bainbridge Island where we until recently lived, so she just started an all weather outdoor group herself. People showed up in the summer and fall. In the middle of winter it was often just her and our two kids in full rain gear splashing around the beaches.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is such a completely fantastic idea. It would expose kids to exercise, sunlight, allergens, and germs. All things scientific theories like the hygiene hypothesis and vitamin d as a marker of outside exposure are telling us are vital to making a healthy child.

<comment><USER14> > sunlight

Skin cancer, much?

Maybe in Norway this makes sense.

For fair skinned people in lower latitudes, maybe not.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun- exposure...](https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun-exposure- skin-cancer-science)

I try to share this article as much as I can. It's likely much of what we think we know about sun exposure is very wrong.

<comment><USER15> Looks like bad advice for someone with fair skin and family cancer history (me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My oldest kid was at a Danish outdoor pre-school. They wouldn't be in execpt for taking nap. Other than that they were outside come rain or shine.

<comment><USER17> I thought nordic kids especially napped outdoors: [https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988)

<comment><USER16> When they are babies yes not later.

<comment><USER17> ah right, that makes sense

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another article I recently read was on North Country School in upstate NY: [https://evolution-institute.org/a-school-camp-and-retreat- ce...](https://evolution-institute.org/a-school-camp-and-retreat-center- informed-by-evolutionary-science/)

This said, I wish there was more exploration beyond Northern Europe and North America. Speaking just from anecdotes, in areas of the global south (India), there's seemingly a huge drive for families (and thus school) be more oriented around their kids developing skills for marketability. Not trying to assert there's anything wrong with that given wealth inequality, though in thinking of examples of the counter Manish Jain comes to mind: [https://schoolingtheworld.org/](https://schoolingtheworld.org/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I went to a Norwegian preschool. And it was almost an outdoor school. Everyday we would go on long walks and activities in the woods. We would learn how to have fun in the rain with buckets and puddles. That didn't mean there weren't indoor activities, but we did a good mix.

</comment><comment><USER20> Related, Governors Island in NYC has a huge area called 'The Yard' [0] that's full of.. random hunks of wood and metal, pallets, rope, random tires and broken appliances. All for kids to play around in. It's just stuff a normal kid in a big city wouldn't get exposed to.

[0] [https://govisland.com/things-to- do/programs/playgroundnycs-t...](https://govisland.com/things-to- do/programs/playgroundnycs-the-yard)

<comment><USER21> Maybe you live in more upscale cities than me but that all looks like commonly discarded stuff that some kids walking home from school would play with if they came across it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> We had outdoor school in the (I think it was) 6th grade when I was a kid. This would have been early 90s. 4.5 days, slept in cabins. Parents came to visit on just one of the days. It rained. It was muddy. We got cold. But we learned a lot.

It was a good time.

</comment><comment><USER23> cool idea. I think we have one here in San Francisco. I just wonder about rain/snow (for some areas) and then naps..where do they take them? But in general I think the kids (and adults) need more outdoor time

<comment><USER6> There is a lot of gear involved... our son wears long underwear, wool socks, proper rain jacket / pants...and we're in a relatively mild climate. I think that's one of the benefits though - it teaches kids that crap weather doesn't mean you can't go outside and play, you just need to be prepared.

As far as naps - our kiddo doesn't take a nap anymore, so it isn't an issue. Younger classes typically get out earlier, so you could do a nap then. I'm not sure there are any all day outdoor preschools....

<comment><USER24> That is exactly what we would need for our son if we sent him to preschool in southern China (maybe not the rain jacket) simply given the lack of indoor heating (we will wait till he is older).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> DACH[0] snores; it's had this for a long time:

Waldkrippe and Waldkindergarten

[0] - [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/DACH](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/DACH)

</comment><comment><USER26> I thought, this would be hell for most of the year where I live (because of the weather). So I looked at the locations, California and the NE. Yep.

<comment><USER27> It's pretty common in Northern European countries too - even in winter. On a sunny winters day when it's -20C it's perfectly comfortable with the right clothing and footwear (which isn't expensive).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm old enough to remember a time when both parents didn't work full time and the other parents in the neighborhood helped watch each others children from time to time.

It didn't cost much money, and the part time wages were plenty to cover a lot of expenses. Unfortunately, the value of our money was destroyed by politicians, and wages have been depressed for several decades due to economic policies in place.

<comment><USER3> I hear this sentiment a lot, but as someone living the "one breadwinner, wife and three kids" life, it seems completely doable on tech job wages.

You just have to adjust your lifestyle somewhat. People talk about how you used to be able to live on much less money, but they forget all the added conveniences people have.

For example, my Grandma stayed home with my Dad and his seven siblings. But they also had an outhouse until he was in junior high. They also had a garden and lots of DIY improvisation knowledge.

The way I like to think of my current family situation is that instead of calling my wife a "homemaker" or something traditional like that, I say she's "financially independent". We have enough money that she doesn't have to work. So she doesn't. So what if I have to work. We're halfway to freedom.

<comment><USER28> The average tech wage today is comparable to everyone's average household income in 1980, relative to median home price in the US. Compare the S&P 500 relative to median income and we're even worse off.

On one hand, working in the tech sector is not a bad place to be. On the other hand, we're no better off than the average person in 1980, relative to their peers. Minimum wage was $3.10 in 1980, it's just $7.25 today (federal). Seems we've done everything we can to destroy domestic labor over the last 40 years.

<comment><USER3> Maybe because I graduated college / entered the workforce through the peak of the recession, but I've found that I tend not to compare my living standard with those I grew up in nor those that my parents grew up in.

Yes, I think we probably took several wrong turns along the way, but here is where we are, and I find that I am much more content with things if I just accept right now as my baseline. Compared to many (most?) of the people I associate with, I'm doing pretty darn well.

<comment><USER28> I'm generally content with my position in life, but I'm not content with where most people are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> waldorf does this; my daughter did not love the waldorf summer experience of being outside all day, every day, even for lunch in July ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds super appealing but also a little "things white people like". What to do in inner cities or Kansas?

<comment><USER3> Kansas has outdoors. Might not have forests, but there is still benefit from being outside. I think they are called Forest Schools because they started in Europe / Scandinavia, which are forested places. Doesn't seem like there is any reason the concept couldn't be adapted to other climates.

<comment><USER12> I think "forest school" is kind of a mistranslation of the German "Waldkindergarten." "Wald" is strictly "forest" but idiomatically means the great outdoors, the wilds. Kind of a similar confounding as the word for woman and wife being the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is nice if you live in a nice cool place with a magical shady forest full of wonders, but in most places kids will be in sweltering heat with the sun beating down on them all day putting them at risk for melanoma. I hated recess because of this, I just did not see the allure of being outside.

<comment><USER31> Most towns have woodlands of some sort, don't they? I mean, globally. Sure there are desserts ...

<comment><USER24> Not to mention "living outside" is the norm in Southeast Asia (well, you aren't in a forest at least).</comment></comment></comment>


Should startups have pay to pitch their business? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.vonotes.com/start-ups-pay-pitch-business/ <comment><USER2> I think it all depends on the quality of the convention you plan to attend. Are there success stories? Try to find out the amount of deals that are done through this convention.

</comment><comment><USER3> No. VC's should pay to attend demo day.</comment>


Microsoft Surface Touch keyboards self-destruct – and more - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/09/microsoft_surface_problems_surface/ <comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft: "Hmmm... this hardware stuff is harder than we thought"</comment>


Mac mini blocks UBUNTU installation? (LTT on Twitter) - rwx<comment> https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1067232394934083584 </comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not Mac mini specific, but affecting every Mac with T2-chip. Still unclear why. For more details see: [https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux/issues/71](https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux/issues/71)</comment>


When nostalgia fails: a dad rewatches the TV of his childhood - <AUTHOR> http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/in-the-night-garden/45585/when-nostalgia-fails-a-dad-rewatches-the-tv-of-his-childhood <comment><USER2> > _It looks like everything that's ever been said about the 60s, 70s and 80s > is true. What a bunch of savages we were_

Or, you know, what a bunch of prudish crybabies you've become...

Post is more about trying to be funny and find ways to fault the old shows than about making its case.

<comment><USER3> Post isn't really trying to make its case, it's just trying to be funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very often I like watching old shows. I find many new ones to be overloaded with style and cuts. I feel that it only appeals to new generation that buy into it. When I run into a Columbo episode, I'm so liking the slow pacing, the simplicity, the filming; even with the shallow bits at times.

Also there's a format thing, the only way they could decorate shows was with freeze and a bit of thrill jingle. I kindof like this way.

There's also the spirit of the day. 70s to 80s shows were often sunny forever life style. It's soothing.

Even supercars shows, with highly disturbingly bad effects [1] have a stupid simple formula that I find honest, even if it's often dumb. It's just entertainment, I find it less pretentious in a way.

[1] be ready for a shock if you ever watch Knight Rider again.

<comment><USER5> For amusement I recently started watching a French 1960s series called Les Chevaliers du Ciel, there are loads of episodes on YouTube. With my five-year- old, instead of kids' programming.

As well as lots of aeroplanes I have found the same as you; gentle pacing, lingering scenes, no snarkiness, no real swearing. It is very refreshing how drama used to be filmed.

I might try the Littlest Hobo soon, if I can avoid crying during the title song!

<comment><USER4> That's the kind of thing that I feel "modern" times forgot. Tech allows for toying, so people optimize that thinking it's better when it's actually very very very relative.

I do believe part of my appreciation for that is due to nostalgia imprinted in my brain. But it's not all. There's a form of simplicity/intent ratio that is higher in older times. You didn't artificially inflate everything to make them pop more, you just let them emerge slowly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a complete opposite feeling about 80s shows on (french) TV. I was very fond of The Mysterious Cities of Gold, Once Upon a Time... Life, Ulysses 31, the (old school) SpiderMan cartoons, Tom Sawyer, Barbapapa.

And (for something completely different) The Twilight Zone.

35 years later, I rewatch them with my kids, and the magic is definitely still present.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a wee bit disappointing in its analysis. If you fancy a better background read into some of the dystopian TV series of the 70's (I'm 51 so this is the era of UK TV I grew up watching as a child) then get a copy of "Scarred For Life Volume One":

[http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/stephen-brotherstone-dave- law...](http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/stephen-brotherstone-dave- lawrence/scarred-for-life-volume-one/paperback/product-23116461.html)

I've got a bit of a 70's hauntology thing going and this book scratches that itch somewhat.

<comment><USER8> Yes. He never mentioned Mr NoseyBonk. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87NHueHBHwY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87NHueHBHwY)

There were some good things, like Vision On (a programme for deaf children, that included very early Aardman animation work) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyWKcgmHwpo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyWKcgmHwpo)

<comment><USER7> Hoo boy, I'd forgotten about Mr Noseybonk (and his dildo farm O_o), though by the time that was aired I was ~13 and kids TV was less of a thing for me. I did like Vision On. A real favourite was Mr Benn, I used to love his adventures:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7goleREp884](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7goleREp884)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like a lot of people here are assuming a level of seriousness on the part of the author that doesn't seem to be there.

Seems like he's just taken the premise "man, I watched a bunch of shows I grew up with and that shit was way weirder than I remember" and stretched it to article length. I don't see any real commentary, actual or attempted, at all.

</comment><comment><USER10> _Rainbow_ theme music:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJsaujSs7Fw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJsaujSs7Fw)

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to understand why early 70's educational TV was important, watch this clip. Also spend some time reading the comments.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kojxgL3nf0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kojxgL3nf0Y)

</comment><comment><USER12> I grew up in the 80s. All of my shows were just product placement for toys.

<comment><USER13> Hill Street Blues was decent.

Maybe not kid friendly, but well done.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_Street_Blues](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_Street_Blues)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> my kids are watching shows like backyardigans, creative galaxy, daniel tiger etc. There is no violence and they are filled from top to bottom with (boring) wholesome lessons.

The shows I watched (tom and jerry, loony toons, brady bunch etc) were filled with violence and pretty much had no redeeming qualities.

I wouldnt worry if my kids watched the shows I watched, but I agree with a previous poster that there is no way the author actually believed the shows of his childhood were wholesome and pure.

</comment><comment><USER15> Dunno if it's just me, but I just can't watch old TV shows like I can movies. They just feel off somehow.

</comment><comment><USER16> > In kids' shows back then, there were no missiles loaded with sexual > references - or clever deconstructions of TV itself - aimed above young > heads

As soon as I got to this bit I knew either the author was deeply wrong or pretending to be so for the sake of the article; so much British kids TV had a surreal, occasionally dark tone to it in the 80s. _Danger Mouse_ was a fourth- wall breaking spy parody. _The Magic Roundabout_ was overtly trippy.

Especially regarding sexual references: this is Britain, home of innuendo culture. Where Kenneth Williams had a whole series of running sketches full of gay sexual references on primetime radio at a time when homosexuality was illegal - relying on the censors and censorious not understanding Polari. It would be surprising if people didn't sneak innuendo into kids TV.

Then there's an entire section of American cartoons that won't be broadcast any more; I remember seeing the _wartime_ Disney propaganda Donald/Mickey output, which was both extremely dark and by current standards extremely racist. Someone in 80s programming had evidently decided to stick cartoons on an afternoon without paying attention to the content.

(Polari example: [https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/round-the- horn-a...](https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/round-the-horn- antenna/) )

<comment><USER13> Yup. Lots of old, dark cartoons.

Here's a Tom & Jerry that's pretty bleak: [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3xxbmn](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3xxbmn)

Or, if you're rushed for time, Google "cartoon suicide reel".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's hard to disable my adblocker for the correct domain if the anti-adblocker message redirects to a different domain.

<comment><USER18> I noticed this too!

Here's a convenient link to bypass the terrible coding: [https://archive.fo/ZSzL5](https://archive.fo/ZSzL5)</comment></comment>


The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking - <AUTHOR> http://share.growthhacker.tv/?u=8d8302

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Peacemaker, right now this is the only format, maybe in near future. Thanks for the interest

</comment><comment><USER2> Any way to get this all on one page or a download perhaps?

<comment><USER3> an epub would be even awesomer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is sweet! very well put together.

</comment><comment><USER5> iframes... iframes everywhere....</comment>


Sleeping in rooms with even a little light can increase risk of depression - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Health/sleeping-rooms-lighting-increase-risk-depression-study/story?id=53636492 <comment><USER2> Sort of OT, but this reminds me of a question I've not been able to find an answer for on blue light and sleep. (OT because the article says nothing about blue light).

One way light affects sleep is via the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). These are a third kind of photoreceptor in our retinas, distinct from the more well known rods and cones. These are most sensitive to blue light. They signal the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the brain with information about the amount of light they are receiving. The SCN controls circadian rhythms, and uses the changes in light as the day ends as reported by the ipRGCs to do things like to keep things that should be synchronized to the day/night cycle in sync.

Blue light in the evening can mess this up because it makes it look like it is still daylight, as far as far as the SCN can can tell from what it gets from the ipRGCs.

What I have not found anywhere is whether this is based on absolute or relative amount of blue light. Does the SCN look for blue light to fall below a certain fixed threshold, or does it do something like note the peak level of blue light during the day, and then look for the blue light to fall below a certain fraction of that?

The reason this matters is that more and more of our devices that we want to use in the evening supply blue light. We try to counter that by adding features that change the color spectrum in the evening to something with less blue. But that doesn't always work. Computers usually can do it, and often so can tablets and phones. I don't think many TVs have such a setting, though.

If the SCN works with absolute levels, fixing the devices (or wearing blue light filtering glasses) might be the only answer if you aren't able to stop using your devices in the evening.

But if it is based on relative levels, keyed off the peak daytime level...then instead of fixing all the devices it might be possible to address the problem by greatly boosting blue levels in the middle of the day, so that your evening device levels will be far enough down from the peak to not affect anything.

<comment><USER3> IIRC from reading papers, there seems to be a dose-response effect, both w.r.t intensity and match to peak sensitive wavelength (~465nm). Even green light has some effect.

Avoiding blue light at night _after you go to sleep_ is definitely an under- appreciated problem, especially for folks that stay up late. If you have a habit of going to bed at 2:30am, and the sun rises at 5:30am and comes in your window, you're getting blue light during your circadian night (enough light can make it in through your eyelids to be a problem) -- this may screw up your sleep schedule.

<comment><USER4> Anecdotally, I know the amount of light that comes in between the window sill and the curtain can throw off my sleep schedule - I tend to feel most alert around 1am, so I'm a late sleeper, and when the sun rises early (~4:30am in summer around here) I tend to feel unrested or I'm woken after only an hour or two's sleep (and can't get back to sleep even after getting rid of the light). Putting the curtain up on the window sill to block the light completely gets rid of that effect.

Oddly artificial light (even with bulbs on the blue-end of the spectrum) tends not to do the same -- if I'm woken for other reasons and use artificial lights and displays then try to get back to sleep, or leave lights on in the room, it's usually not an issue. No idea if that's some sort of dose-response effect or a reaction to the sun cycling rather than being constant (or even placebo potentially).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing I miss from Italy are _real_ shutters:

[https://blog.therealitaly.com/2007/08/09/window- technology/](https://blog.therealitaly.com/2007/08/09/window-technology/)

<comment><USER6> I grew up sleeping in pitch black darkness, and having lived now for a while in the Nordics, where summer nights are light and curtains are mediocre at best, I can share that feeling.

I wonder if the higher rates of depression here may have something to do with this (interestingly, I remember reading somewhere that suicides in the Nordics peak in Springtime).

<comment><USER7> I've lived in Norway (40 km south of Oslo for the last 32 years, generally with only light curtains. Not noticed any tendency to depression or difficulty sleeping in myself or my family.

Mind you, most hotels here that expect foreign guests have blackout blinds or at least very heavy curtains,

<comment><USER6> My first Summer in Finland, I was renting an apartment with crappy curtains. I was dead tired through May, until I broke down and duct-taped large trash bags to the windows. The difference in sleep quality was nothing short of amazing.

I have blackout curtains nowadays, and I've also gotten used to the light somewhat, but I still miss proper rolling curtains that completely shut the light out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Should we assume that the light itself is causing the depression? Or should we assume that the light leads to poor sleep, and then the poor sleep is what triggers the depression?

<comment><USER9> And how does poor sleep causing depression square with sleep deprivation alleviating it?

<comment><USER10> I could imagine that being chronically deprived of quality sleep is different than skipping an entire circadian cycle once per week.

Edit: I recently made the mistake (for a few months) of taking my medication before bed, rather than in the morning. This included vitamin D. Guess what happens when the body gets a dose of vitamin D at night? No quality sleep for you! So I certainly sympathize with the quest for quality sleep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In prehistoric times, before shelter was common, would a half or full moon cause the same effect?

I just wonder about how actually natural a pitch black sleep is.

<comment><USER12> >I just wonder about how actually natural a pitch black sleep is.

"Pitch black" is another thing entirely, but the moon is much dimmer than the light levels this study reports as causing depression (5 lux). And it's pretty dim (equivalent to stray light from a streetlamp).

>The intensity of moonlight varies greatly depending on its phase, but even the full Moon typically provides only about 0.05–0.1 lux illumination

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for putting it into perspective. 5 lux is quite a lot to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Quick plug I started curating a list of things that may help depression yesterday over on Github [https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression](https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression)

I just added this

<comment><USER14> Please consider including links to local crisis helplines e.g. [1] and [2]. Doubtless some people in the midst of a crisis will discover this resource, and it is really important that they are aware there is immediate help available. [3]

[1] [https://www.samaritans.org/](https://www.samaritans.org/)

[2] [https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/](https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/)

[3] [https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/mental-health-and-suicide- report...](https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/mental-health-and-suicide-reporting- guidelines/)

<comment><USER15> On the other hand you may turn away depressed people who are not in a crisis because they don't want to be associated with the idea of suicide when their main problem is they have no will or energy to do anything ever. You might end up hurting these people by constantly mentioning suicide whenever they finally get the guts to learn about their depression. "Oh, you depressed? Here, read about suicide! Let me scare you back into your hole!"

-a once depressed person whose recovery was delayed by the association described

<comment><USER13> You both make good points. I opened an issue to discuss. Please have your say.

[https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression/issues/1](https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression/issues/1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I added a real blackout curtain to my room and really noticed a difference in the quality of my sleep and my general mood. It was designed to really black out all light... [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZJ88DY/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZJ88DY/)

<comment><USER17> Ikea also has a great assortment of easy to install blackout shades, [http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70349252/](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70349252/)

<comment><USER18> What we ought to have is a blackout shade that will automatically roll down at night and back up in the morning, when we _want_ sunlight to start waking us up.

<comment><USER19> Look for motorized roller curtain. I have those in two bedrooms. They are actually very convenient, even though I just have the remote control and not any automation. DIY persons can also find instructions for getting the shades from IKEA and motors from Ebay.

Mine are using motors/control from Somfy. Those have at least worked flawlessly for several years.

For the roller curtains there are also models which have "things" on the sides where the curtain slides in. This blocks the light that would otherwise shine in from there. If this is not an option, should look for curtain which is dark from the outside. This should also help a little bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Link to the study: [https://sci- hub.tw/https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/...](https://sci- hub.tw/https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/3/427/4056592)

<comment><USER21> This is worth noting:

> Our study has several potential limitations. First, participants were not > randomly selected, possibly leading to selection bias. However, the > parameters of BMI and estimated glomerular filtration rate were similar to > corresponding national data in Japan and the follow-up rate was sufficiently > high.

> Second, bedroom light intensity was measured without eye-level light meters, > and sleep/awake status was measured only over 2 days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So does my body itself need to be protected from seeing light or just my face/eyes? I'll just get a sleep mask.

<comment><USER23> Skimming the original study, it talks about subjects opening and closing their eyes, so I would very much assume that it's entirely related to seeing light (and not about absorbing light through the face or body).

If you get a sleep mask, be sure to look for one designed to not put pressure on your eyes, which are not hard to find if you seek it out. The cheap ones you get at pharmacies and dollar stores put direct pressure on the eyeballs and it's a wonder that anyone can tolerate them and are perhaps even harmful.

<comment><USER24> Any brands you'd suggest?

<comment><USER25> Hibermate are very good, I use them especially when travelling. Original style are reasonably priced [https://www.hibermate.com/products/the-original- hibermate](https://www.hibermate.com/products/the-original-hibermate)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I currently sleep in a room with zero natural light.

I can't tell you whether this makes me more or less likely to be depressed (I think it pales in comparison to other things in my life), however I do always keep a low light on -- without this, it would be very difficult to find my bearings when I wake up.

Also, it is extremely difficult to wake up when it's completely pitch-black.

<comment><USER27> Get a wake up light.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Light does not happen by magic and tends to not occur alone. I would be very leery of asserting cause and effect here.

<comment><USER29> There's a very long bibliography stretching back more than a decade and including at least one mouse model of depression. It's not just one study.

<comment><USER28> I am not readily finding this bibliography. If you would be so kind as to link to it (and perhaps copy/paste if it is paywalled.)

<comment><USER30> There are a bunch of results for "light at night" on Google Scholar and Pubmed, but I'm not sure of specific references. This particular study (a manuscript is available on sci-hub[0]) does not have a discussion of this topic (other stuff that could come with the light) at all and two reviews I searched for "noise" and "sound" did not seem to have a discussion either. I'm sure some of the many studies over the years have at least actively changed the lighting and measured melatonin, but it is sloppy to not even discuss the topic.

In the case of this study, a figure at the end of the manuscript shows that most of the light exposure (averaged) happens in the hour after bed and hour before getting up, so that seems like a big clue that it isn't just a case of light at night (ideally they would divide light exposure into three segments and look at each). Also, the study started with people not showing depressive symptoms but it didn't consider if light exposure had changed and the study seems on the small (863 people) and short (median 2 year follow up) side if light (and whatever else) exposure had not changed. For that matter, it sounds like they only measured light exposure and sleep for two days and assume that is representative of the whole period.

It sounds like the depression scale[1] was given at the beginning and end of the study and looking at number or duration of episodes could have a different result. Also, it isn't clear that depressive symptoms here necessarily correspond with depression or if they are signs of a sleep disorder.

All in all, this isn't a good study to look at individually.

[0] [https://twin.sci- hub.tw/ef19202b216d8e1af61a7ced2510e060/oba...](https://twin.sci- hub.tw/ef19202b216d8e1af61a7ced2510e060/obayashi2017.pdf)

[1] [https://consultgeri.org/try-this/general- assessment/issue-4....](https://consultgeri.org/try-this/general- assessment/issue-4.pdf)

<comment><USER28> Thank you.

I am not going to be able to dig into the bibliography mentioned. I have been skimming titles and I am not swayed.

I used to be on a health list where abstracts were frequently posted. I stopped bothering to read the abstracts after speaking with a man with a PhD in chemistry who told me the abstracts frequently claim the opposite of the study.

A relative of mine works at the CDC and has had cancer multiple times. They used to bitch at me about the lack of good cancer studies. The detail I recall them lamenting was that basically you got dozens of variations on whatever the latest funding craze was because researchers could get money for that and maybe one out of a hundred studies was actually proposing a new idea, if that much.

I have read bad studies. I have participated in bad studies. I have been on health lists where people were asking for tips on how to qualify for studies as a means to get free treatment. It looked to me like a form of gaming the system in a way that would skew research results. I don't think they were up to anything nefarious. They just had serious health problems and we're desperate for help. But if you are getting tips for how to get into the study that you don't currently qualify for, I cannot help but think that will skew the study results.

I am generally a skeptical person anyway. But I am very leery of this kind of research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Slightly off-topic: I've noticed if I work all night (e.g. yesterday writing a paper proposal for a conference), and I manage to stay up all the way until dawn, I literally get euphoria once Sun glances through windows. I can be super tired, but it shots my mood up considerably.

</comment><comment><USER32> It seems like a study like this could have actually modified the light levels and measured the changes.

<comment><USER20> Actually, they didn't touch the lights at all, they only measured the lights that people already were exposed to. They write that "an interventional method, such as a randomized controlled trial using a LAN exposure, is not possible because of ethical concerns".

<comment><USER32> I can't imagine minor adjustments to light levels could ever be considered unethical. Is it unethical when a city installs a new street light?

<comment><USER33> It's unethical to do X when X is expected to harm the study subjects. Exceptions are sometimes made for interventions with terminally ill patients, but in general studies that are expected to harm subjects are not approved by ethics boards.

They could reasonably do an intervention study that only reduces bedroom light to confirm if that corrects depression on subjects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think a lot of studies like this are just wrong. When I was a kid, I couldn't sleep without a light on because I'd get depressed. So later on in life if I didn't remember that, I'd think that I just had a light on and now I'm depressed. I think depressed people like a little light.

Much like they say red meat causes cancer, I don't think it's the red meat. I think it's how it's cooked. Red meat is usually barbecued and that char is what could be causing the cancer.

<comment><USER35> >So later on in life if I didn't remember that, I'd think that I just had a light on and now I'm depressed.

What? Anyway, this study has strict definitions of what "depression" is, and I doubt whatever you felt as a child would qualify.

>Much like they say red meat causes cancer, I don't think it's the red meat. I think it's how it's cooked. Red meat is usually barbecued and that char is what could be causing the cancer.

They say eating red meat may cause cancer. Even if your guess is true, they would still be right as red meat is often barbecued. And as a larger point, thinking something like this is true doesn't matter until you get evidence for it.

<comment><USER34> If I didn't remember why I wanted light on.

They would be right about red meat but the point would be lost if people begin switching to bbqing chicken and still get cancer.

<comment><USER35> I still think you're confusing whatever feelings you felt with clinical depression.

>They would be right about red meat but the point would be lost if people begin switching to bbqing chicken and still get cancer.

The study was showing a link they found, they weren't giving a diet recommendation. But, it would only be lost if your guess was correct and everybody that made the switch barbecued as much chicken as they did beef. Otherwise, fewer people would develop cancer than if the scientific study had not been published.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> They still use go.com?

Lol, everytime I see that domain all I can think of is it being the place where Infoseek went to die.

</comment><comment><USER37> Meanwhile:

22\. ▲ The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation (mosaicscience.com)

389 points by onuralp 1 day ago | flag | hide | 135 comments

<comment><USER38> Sleep deprivation is different from sleeping poorly.

<comment><USER39> Both articles are talking about depression, neither is about sleeping poorly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What I don't like are the "solutions" they propose: noise? use earplugs, light? use curtains. Well I will not be able to sleep if I have something in my ears and if you pull the curtains then you can no longer wake up naturally with the Sun. How about changing your lifestyle so that you can have silence and dark during the night and light in the morning without any "devices". You might have to quit your job :)

<comment><USER20> So other people should change their jobs because you can't sleep with earplugs? Seems like a curious way to see the world.

Regarding light, if you want morning sunlight, motorized curtains with a timer are cheaper than moving.

<comment> cup-of-tea He didn't say that other people should change their jobs for him. He said they should change their jobs instead of having to sleep with earplugs or curtains. But I think he fails to realise that many people live in _very_ different environments to him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > _those exposed to more than five "lux" of light each night had higher rates > of depression_

Light can be measured, depression cannot. It barely even has a definition, let alone quantifiable rate. I'd sooner believe that auto-playing videos had a stronger link to depression than lux.

Random theory... Maybe depressed people are highly sensitive to the world's problems/suffering both in immediate and wider environment, their antennae picks up this instability that manifests as internal trauma, anxiety etc. Someone should do an experiment to see if isolation for a few weeks influences depression rate; avoidance of all news, no phone, no internet, no people. Get ready for "Study finds extreme boredom effective anti-depressant".</comment>


Event Driven Architecture – how NodeJs and Nginx work behind the hood - <AUTHOR> https://gnugat.github.io/2016/04/27/event-driven-architecture.html <comment><AUTHOR> Explaining Event Driven Architecture and the point of async, by implementing: a HTTP server, an Event Loop, a Scheduler, deferrer / promise and a Thread Pool.</comment>


How to Choose an Office Chair - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/how-to-choose-an-office-chair/245794/ <comment><AUTHOR> See also this earlier discussion about attempting to find an inexpensive alternative to the Aeron: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=585693> . About half the commenters appear to say, "There is no cheap alternative." I'm using a Herman Miller Embody right now and keep meaning to post a long review of it, but I haven't yet.

See also: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190337400457658...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903374004576582673310637998.html)</comment>


DNA structure and not only sequence is important - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/chromotopo/

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this for the people who found the DIY biohacking to be interesting, and might be toying with bioinformatics as a hobby. I've been messing with bioinformatics on and off for some time now, and a friend of mine is heavily involved (grad student). From a hacker perspective, it's a very exciting time -- the black box is now a gray box...it's not at white box because most of everything that scientists are doing is tweak something and rely on the remainder of the existing technology to do whatever it does that we don't understand that completes what we need it to do...kind of like seeing the hex and going "well, if I change this variable's value here..what happens?" There are some people working on making essentially high level code for biohacking, but from what I can tell they are still a small group. There's some exciting stuff going on down in San Diego, and I guess in Japan from what I hear, but this meeting between molecular biology and computer science is still young and not that well tapped.

Now, before you young entrepreneurs go ravaging this field...please, don't kill us all. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER2> i love this line: "Pick a random person of the street, say 'genome,' and they'll think 'sequence.' "

i want to live where this guy lives.</comment>


Star Wars Traceroute - How I did it - <AUTHOR> http://beaglenetworks.net/

<comment><USER2> Holy center aligned code batman. Nice work though, wish I had been that adventurous during the snow storm :)

<comment><USER3> I wonder what a programming language would look like if it were intended to be viewed center-aligned. That might be a fun snowstorm/CNY project for any language geeks out there.

Edit: for those of you confused by the red envelopes and fire crackers, happy Lunar New Year (CNY).

<comment><USER4> Center aligned is too easy: <http://www.ioccc.org/1987/westley.c> (sorry, couldn't resist)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They should have a new qualification - CCIE FG - (CCIE fun and games!).

I have seen a few highly qualified networking people do some funny things, but, this has got to be the best by far!

</comment><comment><USER6> The upstreams had a valid route back to it, it just didnt have a valid forward route - and thank goodness because the traceroute boxes got ddosed into oblivion. This was a trick which ONLY used 1 ip address and some borrowed PTRs. I could have used used space too, but the customers mail probably would have stopped working. The source of the IP block is an ISP that gets a /20 at a time. Its a fact of life that unused blocks do sit around.

</comment><comment><USER7> The sad aftermath of the story: [http://beaglenetworks.net/post/42828595476/what-i-learned- fr...](http://beaglenetworks.net/post/42828595476/what-i-learned-from-being-a- fleeting-internet-celeb)

Somebody apparently found it necessary to DDOS this harmless internet curiosity so it does not exist anymore. A reminder that people can be wonderful, and people can be just evil, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice example of PHP being put to use on the console.

</comment><comment><USER9> related : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5192656>

<comment><USER10> Video of Star Wars Traceroute: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPJELwSV1P0>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> that's really interesting. i have a non-ccie question, though:

if it's sending packets on a dance through a virtual network, why does that have to use public addresses? would using a private network (eg 10.0.0.0) not have worked? why not? (and is it odd for people to still have unused /24 lying around?)

<comment><USER12> Because you're sending udp packets to each hop, if it were a private network there would be no route to it.

<comment><USER3> But the packets aren't addressed to the intermediate routers. All of the packets are addressed to the endpoint, with a TTL value too low to make it there. The intermediate routers just reply with an ICMP Time Exceeded packet.

The real problem is that an ICMP Time Exceeded packet coming from behind NAT would presumably either be blocked by the NAT or else have its address changed to the routable public interface of the NAT device. If the packets are dropped, that would obviously be a problem. If the IP address were changed to that of the NAT box, then all of the reverse DNS lookups would have the same result.

By the way, some traceroute implementations use ICMP Echo Request packets instead of UDP.

Edit: punctuation

<comment><USER12> Oh right, yes, that's correct. It's the destination address that counts. EDIT: @0x0 yes of course the DNS too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the Rasmusesque PHP zen. "Hi. I am dumb. I don't write good programs, I write programs that work."

Reminds me of Colombo.

<comment><USER8> Rasmusesque?

<comment><USER14> Rasmus is the creator of PHP. But yeah, Rasmusesque?

<comment><USER15> Rasmus always claimed that he wasn't concerned with beautiful programming that followed a common design pattern or methodology, rather he liked to get things done and so much of PHP is designed in that way.

<comment><USER16> There is an old proverb for this approach: penny wise, pound foolish.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Filepicker.io web widgets - Easy DragDrop & Cloud Uploads - <AUTHOR> http://www.filepicker.io/products/widgets/

<comment><USER2> With one line of HTML, you can pull a photo from dropbox, convert and resize it, and dump it into your S3.

<comment><USER3> It really is easy, took like 5 seconds yesterday

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. We always thought that implementing drag drop uploads, even with jquery plugins, took way too much time and effort.

Plus we do cool stuff, like download acceleration by splitting files up and uploading in parallel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the first I've heard of your service. It looks really cool.

I would find the image conversion particularly useful. Is it possible to upload a file and have it saved at multiple sizes? I couldn't see a way to do this in your API docs.... or else I'm just reading it wrong.

Congrats and keep up the great work.

<comment><AUTHOR> We currently allow you to resize on the fly.

Preconfigured conversion is coming soon :D. Actually, feel free to ping me on olark (on the site) or firstname.lastname@example.com as we're working on it right now and I'd be curious to talk to a customer about some details.

<comment><USER5> Please implement these as derived files in subdirectories. That is; keep the original as is, and allow chained processors in any order with user specified "handles". The handles are subdirectories but filenames are otherwise the same, except for the extensions that may be updated by the processor in a predictable way. So if a user uploads a TeX file, processors can be added for

        /random-file.tex
        "preview"=PNG+Resize(200x400)  - /preview/random-file.png
        "pdf"=TeX-2-PDF(Bicubic=True)  - /pdf/random-file.pdf

Sorry for using a HN thread for this :) And I realize this is a lot of work. Your service looks very promising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks good. We'll be implementing something with filepicker.io in about 2 weeks. How can you make the "pick file" button open and default to "my computer" each time it opens?

Or, even better is there anyway to simply embed the pop up window in a page and eliminate the need to open a modal or pop up?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can specify COMPUTER as the first (and only service) if you wish. <http://jsfiddle.net/filepicker/gJ8yE/>

We're also looking for beta testers with our embed. Contact me at email@example.com and we'll get you set up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really wish I had your S3 upload feature a few weeks back. Right now I get users to select a file to use as their profile picture. Then I save the file locally to my server, upload it to S3, then delete the local file. Huge PITA.

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually do direct S3 uploads. Ping us offline and we'll get you set up.

<comment><USER7> Oh, yeah I know. I just didn't have it a few weeks ago when I was doing something manually and it sucks. This makes it a lot easier :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh god, I just finished integrating Filepicker.io with a client site and I was thinking "man, it would be great if the button showed an indicator that it was done uploading".

I think I'm in love with you guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy customers make me happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hate to ask this ... but is there a graceful fallback for IE7 clients?

<comment><USER2> Yup - drag-drop disappears on IE but the Cloud upload still works

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome! How does this service just keep getting better and better? They are really able to _focus_ on building an awesome product!

<comment><USER2> Wow! Thank you - let us know if there is anything more we can do.

<comment><USER11> I test this several times and found that the page to select files take a while.

Plus, I suspect will be good to have a _very_ prominent 1-default choice. For example, if I expect that the majority of the files come from the user PC, then this will be the default, and the other sources optional.

As stand today, everything look equal and could be confusing

<comment><USER12> I thought the same. They should be grey'ed out, so they seems optional, but keep up the good work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the first time I am coming across this, and I wonder if it works on mobile (saw the webcam feature on the site). Also, as an sdk, integration to mechanical turk would be great so you could workflow it through moderation. Also, document format conversion (not just images) would be great if you piped them through Google drive somehow...

<comment><USER2> We have full native mobile SDKs as well for iOS and Android. Turk and Gdrive conversion are neat ideas - thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Awesome service! Congrats Liyan.

In the past i hated develop the "upload-code", now with your service it's really easy: just one html line.

</comment><comment><USER15> Whats your technology stack for this? Is it NodeJS?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're a Python shop; Flask as the framework, Mongo as the DB, hosted with AWS, hand-rolled JS on jquery.

<comment><USER16> 3 cheers for Flask. always wondered if flask is slowly picking up market share like django (even though it is a micro-framework compared to django)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Smart phone with GREAT reception - <AUTHOR> In the market for a mid/lower end smart phone for my mid 80's father. His current is a Windows phone by Samsung that needs to be replaced.
Though my father is in a major metro area, his town has restricted towers and he is in a very poor reception zone.His Samsung gets zero bars in and around his home. One bar if he is lucky out walking.  My LG G2 gets one bar most of the time with the occasional zip or two.
What I need is user input/opinion on call reception quality, I can handle the rest of it. Unfortunately, nobody seems to mention weak signal reception in reviews anymore. <comment><USER2> You have several things to consider here:

1) Making sure the phone matches the bands offered by his mobile provider in his area. For example, T-Mobile has greatly expanded their band 12 coverage over the past year, but most mobile phones don't have band 12 coverage.

2) The actual RF qualities of the radios on the mobile phones.

3) Many mobile providers offer Wi-Fi calling, so this can be an alternative in a poorly covered area. However Wi-Fi calling is dependent on device support.

4) Many mobile providers offer free or cheap repeaters that connect into your cable modem or DSL routers. These emulate LTE or 3G base stations and can be used to make calls in poorly covered areas. This too works well in homes, and with any devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks on pt 1 and 2. He's actually a pre-paid tmo customer. Unfortunately the wifi and repeaters seem only for post-paid customers

<comment><USER3> Could he move to post-paid? WiFi calling is amazing in areas with bad reception. In the basement at my work, WiFi is the only way to go.

<comment><AUTHOR> He spends at most $50 a year on pre-paid so economically does not make sense.

<comment><USER3> Republic wireless (on the Sprint network) would be a relatively low cost option to try another provider and add WiFi calling. Their fee is $10/month plus data. That would be more than the $50 you pay now, but still manageable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My experience, as an end user in the US, is that reception correlates more strongly with carrier than with phone model. Comparing carriers at your father's matters more than online reviews, I suspect.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd suggest you head on over to:

[http://opensignal.com/coverage-maps/US/](http://opensignal.com/coverage- maps/US/)

And look at signal strength from the major networks. Most smartphones use "off the shelf" cell radios with "off the shelf" antennas. Phone shell materials make a little difference (metal Vs. plastic/glass) in particular if they're poorly grounded[0][1]. But overall I'd say look at network coverage first and foremost, and then look into if you can get a femtocell from the carrier to install in your house.

[0] [http://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-loses-reception- when-a...](http://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-loses-reception-when-antenna- band-is-touched-firmware-issue/) [1] [http://www.pcworld.com/article/202371/smartphone_antenna_tes...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/202371/smartphone_antenna_test.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Rather than focus on the phone, could you look into getting a femto cell installed?

In my country some of our providers support these and you can buy/install them legally. You could contact your networks to see if they support this.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell)

I had an old Nokia candy bar that used to get great reception. If he's just making calls this could be good, plus in a low reception environment batteries drain quickly too so the candybar would be suitable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Grossly simplifying and considering brands with all else being equal, Motorola has historically had great RF engineering, Nokia is good, LG and HTC would be good to average, and Samsung and Apple would be average to mediocre. This is truly a gross simplification, as all else is not equal: it depends on the specific model of phone (sometimes differing greatly between carrier), the bands used in an area, etc.

Ultimately, the only sure option is a "live fire exercise". Apart from that, maybe try a reddit subforum for where your father lives and see if they have good, local advice?

</comment><comment><USER8> Ask some of your fathers neighbors what phones they use and how their reception is.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea, though I think I'll probably get a lot of grumbling. I know one person who has both an iphone and a samsung (and previously a crackberry) that has had the same issues with both tmo and att. His experience is slightly better in that he gets some reception but suffers a good amount of drops.

Prior to using the Samsung Focus my father had a moto feature phone and generally was able to make calls over tmo.</comment></comment>


World Income Mapped by Location - <AUTHOR> http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/age-of-man/map-interactive#b02g21t20w14 <comment><USER2> I always find the common note on CO2 emissions, regarding the US per capita emissions as being higher even though China's overall is now higher, to be heavily context dropping.

The US economy is twice the size of China's, and the US manufacturing output is still larger than China's, and we put out less CO2. The reality is, the US economy is radically more efficient when it comes to CO2 emissions compared to China. US per capita GDP is between nine and ten times higher than China, but CO2 emissions per capita are four times higher.

There's a lot of room for improvement, and we should keep improving, but China isn't even close on economic output to CO2 output.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a beautiful visualization but isn't it quite misleading for China? If you don't count the EU as one block, China is the world's second economy and it is considered to have a gigantic middle-class, in the hundreds of millions (650 million chinese expected to be middle-class by 2022: that is in eight years).

I mean: the big cities in China should clearly appear in blue no?

<comment><USER2> No, the big cities shouldn't shouldn't be blue. The average person in eg Shanghai isn't earning over $12,000 per year. Purple most likely however.

"Shanghai's urban residents, with an average disposable income of 40,188 yuan (US$6,379) last year, earned the most among China's 21 provincial areas that have posted their income growth, according to the latest data."

[http://www.china.org.cn/china/2013-01/26/content_27800262.ht...](http://www.china.org.cn/china/2013-01/26/content_27800262.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great visualization, but this would be much more interesting if it accounted for differences in income within countries as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> It weird how Equatorial Guinea seems to have the highest income levels out of the whole of Africa. I wonder why that is?

<comment><USER2> Substantial oil and gas. $26k GDP per capita (only 700,000 people).

<comment><USER6> And almost all of that money goes to dictator Obiang, his family and his cronies. Equatorial Guinea is the quintessential kleptocracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are more data there but the map that greets you is quite striking, and shows income distribution across the globe.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but it's sad they haven't made any effort to correct for population density. So it's only the overall colour of a country that carries information, the hues just tell you where people live (but you might mistake them for meaning something else, be careful!)

<comment><USER2> If you're saying that the hues correlate primarily to population density as a whole (eg blue vs yellow), that's blatantly false. I believe it's consistent world-wide, that within any given country, the metros earn far more than rural areas, so that's a correct relationship as well. They've also color adjusted within the countries properly. There is a very noticeable difference between different economic zones in China for example (ditto Brazil, or Japan, and so on).

<comment><USER8> I think Tombone5 meant Saturation and not Hue. There are only 4 colors in that chart, the Saturation represent the density of population.

It's true that if you don't pay attention to the caption, you might think that the lighter areas within a country represent the richest people in that country, but no, it's only the population density.

<comment><USER2> I think you're probably spot on, re: hue vs saturation. Thanks for that.

It would seem true that the higher population densities (within a given country) would _almost_ always correlate to higher incomes (relative to that country) as well. I'm not aware of too many cases where the cities with the highest population densities in a country don't tend to have among the highest average incomes as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What are those low income islands in south and middle america?

<comment><USER2> Can you elaborate on where you mean?</comment></comment>


A Conversation with Elon Musk & Sal Khan - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io

<comment><AUTHOR> The last question was about 'the hypertube' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=vDwzmJpI4io#t=2600s)

</comment><comment><USER2> They should send Sal on the Mars mission. Then he can khan out videos "on the fly".</comment>


The Danger of Traveling Light - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/opinion/sunday/airplane-nosebleed.html <comment><USER2> This deserves a better headline, something like "Improvising emergency medical care during a flight."

It's a story about how a surgeon and a nurse treated a passenger who developed a severe nose bleed during the flight. Worth reading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but Hacker News rules are to use the original headline. It's amazing how useful tampons are in a first aid kit!</comment></comment>